Slangbusters Branding Studio | Microenterprise Branding Service

Investing in culture is a brand strategy FTW.   If you are looking for building company culture inside the boundaries of the corporate setting, t he keyword gods have defied you and this is where you should stop reading and probably close the tab. If you are looking for some insight about incorporating culture into your brand, read on. For starters, company culture inside the headquarters or any place with employees working for the brand is also important for the cultural implications outside. If you are an ice-cream brand that has tapped into the culture of a family enjoying ice-cream after dinner, you cannot be a company that forces their employees to work overtime and refrain them from the happiness of sharing the ice-cream with their families. These brands would suffer in how they are perceived by the consumer, no matter how aggressive the marketing is. (Culture > Propaganda) Branding is not what it was a  decade  ago. Earlier, companies would introspect and identi...

  Because size does not matter. (A still from ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’) I have a baker friend. She runs a cloud kitchen, a fancy word used for culinary businesses that are run from home, without a professional setup of a bakery, a restaurant or a cafe. Social media and food delivery apps have given way to many such small-scale businesses to run from homes and small kitchens. My friend single-handedly manages taking orders, production, delivery, and accounting of her baking business. She recently created an Instagram account for her bakery to reach an audience and to share images of her beautiful cakes and jars that she sells to local residents of her city. When I happened to go through her IG stories, I saw she was using ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ when she was taking orders, sharing reviews, etc. One of her stories read: “Now launching, new flavors in cupcakes: DM us, we will be happy to customize your order for any event.” We.  She delivers quality pastry, has a culinary arts diplo...

  Let’s face it. We all are a cocktail of biases. In the world of business, there is no room for some. As I write this,    at a local Starbucks, I have a corporate meeting going on at the next table. Two men in suits, sipping their mocha lattes are discussing and I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. The meeting seemed to have gone successful, indicated by the firm handshake before they left. Only that I did not understand a word of what they were talking about, apart from something about quarterly goals. I heard words like disruption and outbound strategies. It seemed like they were from an advertising conglomerate. They used the word branding so many times out of context, I almost wanted to intervene. Although, why did I fail to understand what the meeting was about? Why did it seem successful, even with the use of heavy jargon? Before we talk about complexity bias, I would definitely acknowledge that I am not a marketing executive or an owner of any marketing jargon dictionar...

  Heard about water-cooler jokes?  Back then in offices there used to be one watercooler on each floor and folks came to drink water (if we go by the obvious logic). But that was just an excuse. Exactly like kids in Indian schools go to sharpen their pencils near the dustbin just to spend some time with their friends.  The water-cooler was more like a gossip joint for colleagues to exchange juicy talks or to crib about unapproved leaves. Back then, huh! This still happens. Only now water coolers are replaced by vending machines. It took me quite a while to understand how different graphic design is from web designing. And how do you expect people to know the difference? The graphic design originated in the early bit of the nineties. Web design came a decade later. Only when the internet made it to the people. Just like my mother who thinks that because it is a multicuisine restaurant, they are supposed to serve everything excellent; most people think that any designer can...

Or maybe it doesn’t — because ‘traction’ in itself is abstract. But you see, we can talk about it. Okay, let’s park this for a while. We don’t want you to tear out of the door and plunge into jargon right away. Let’s start clearing the fog with a few simple questions. How do you feel now since you are your own boss? What questions hover your mind day in and out as a business owner? Where do you see your business two years or five years down the line and what are the strategies you have decided to act upon? And perhaps the most important question of the day — how are you going to measure the outcome of those strategies? What is it that’s going to define if your business is heading on the right trajectory or having too many plateaus? Too many  questions ? Well, sitting with a pen and paper (literally) is necessary if you have only just begun to take charge of your newly established business. Soon, you would want to know where you stand, soon your investors will be inquisitive if you ...